Everyone knows than an isolated species of plants or animals will develop unique characteristics... But did you know? The United States has a class of ships that have their own unique features and are geographically isolated from the rest of the world? Yep! Speciation can apply to engineering! Meet the Lake Freightor, a unique type of cargo ship only found on the American great lakes. You've probably heard of the most famous lost freighter, the Edmund Fitzgerald, but what you probably haven't heard is this: 1. Due to the lack of rust, Lake freighters regularly survive to be more than 80 years old, with the oldest ship staying in service for 112 years. 2. There was a lake freighter with 9 WWII battle stars that only retired in the early 2010s, another, with 2 battle stars, is still in service... see if you can spot it in the pictures below 3. The US stopped building lake freighters in the 1970s, but recently resumed, with a new ship entering service in 2022.

For those unaware, you can walk into any big-box store in the US and walk out with a phased array satellite dish. And it's made in the US, by Americans. This is why I personally use Starlink and am generally supportive of SpaceX direct-to-cell, as well as SpaceX pushing further into the consumer device market. If no one else is going to build hardware in the US, then let's all buy from the people who do, whether we like the CEO's podcast interviews or not.